CHAPTER XXIII.
ANOTHER NIGHT EXPEDITION With the drum still beating on the shore, the Teaser rounded the northwestern point of the island, when the wheel was heaved over.
Christy was entirely confident in regard to the navigation, for he had steered the Bellevite through the same channel when on an excursion a year before.

But he had daylight and sunshine at that time instead of fog and gloom as on the present occasion.
"Buoy on the starboard, sir!" reported the leadsman on that side.
"Buoy on the port hand!" cried the man on the other side, a minute later.
"We are all right," added the lieutenant.

"We are between the middle ground and the island.

The buoy on the port is the southwest point of the island." The Bellevite was not the only man-of-war that lay off Pensacola, for the Brooklyn and other vessels were there to assist in the defence of Fort Pickens, which the enemy were determined to capture if possible.
The government had done everything within its means to "hold the fort," though an army of about ten thousand men had been gathered in the vicinity to reduce it.

The dry-dock which had floated near Warrenton, and which the Confederates intended to sink in the channel, had been burned, and a force of Unionists, including the Zouaves, called "The Pet Lambs," had been quartered on the island of Santa Rosa.